


That Was Today?

by TigerDragon



Series: Ironclad [3]
Category: Iron Man (Comic), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: 3+1, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Anniversary, F/F, Gift Giving, Oblivious Steve Rogers, Oblivious Tony, Tony Being Tony, Workplace Relationship, always-a-girl!Tony
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-27
Updated: 2013-04-27
Packaged: 2017-12-09 18:17:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/776511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TigerDragon/pseuds/TigerDragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Three times Toni forgot an anniversary, and one time she didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	That Was Today?

 

**  
One: Hiring** ****

There were nitrogen tanks in Peking, ball bearings in Bern and microchips in Surat, all of which were supposed to be delivered to the R&D center at Coney Island by yesterday, and Antonia Stark was on the warpath. She had already chewed her way through the Director of Asian Subsidiaries, the Director of Transport and the Director of R&D (who hadn’t actually had anything to do with the screw-up, but had been unlucky enough to try to complain at the wrong moment), and the Director for Europe had only managed to escape unscathed so far by retreating to a small, anonymous conference room on the fifteenth floor and barricading herself in.

Pepper’s day had been one long chain of meetings, formal and otherwise, in which she soothed, organized, inspired, directed, and otherwise wrangled Stark Industries’ personnel into the kind of collaborative problem-solving team the world hadn’t seen since the Manhattan project.

At five o’clock sharp she appeared in Toni’s office to find her boss slumped in the big chair behind the desk, a large glass of whiskey with ice held against her forehead and an array of notepads, laptops and digital recorders spread out in front of her. Toni acknowledged her entrance with a small grunt and shifted enough to kick a chair out for her, then went back to staring at the inside of her own eyelids.

Looking up from her PDA, Pepper decided not to double-check Toni’s thoughts on the meeting summaries she’d emailed. “Can I get you anything, Ms. Stark?”

“I want an executive-seeking cattle prod. One I can push a button in my desk so that it will fly out, find the source of my displeasure, then zap them like a disobedient steer. Can you get that for me, Miss Potts?”

A corner of Pepper’s mouth twitched upwards. “I’ll look into it, Ms. Stark. It couldn’t make them _more_ difficult to handle.” Taking another step into the office, the assistant stretched her arms over her head, letting out a quiet “oof” as her joints popped, then reached into her ever-present leather folio.

“I’m about to grab some dinner, but I wanted to make sure you got this today,” she explained, placing a creamy white envelope onto Toni’s desk. “This has been the best year of my career, Ma’am.”

“Year....?” Toni shifted in the chair, setting the whiskey down and cracking one eye open. “Oh. Hiring you. That was today?”

Pepper sighed, almost inaudibly. “Yes.”

“Did I buy you something nice?” Toni managed to make it sound plaintive, which was more than a bit unjust, since she was the one who’d forgotten.

The redhead raised an eyebrow. “Not unless you had someone else authorize it.”

“Damn.” Toni picked up the whiskey from the desk, downed it, then stood up and brushed the wrinkles out of her suit jacket. “Do you like girls or boys, Miss Potts?”

Pepper was proud of herself that her jaw dropped only about a quarter of the way. She supposed it was the year of exposure to the most lawsuit-generating boss she’d ever worked for. “I do prefer my presents to be legal, Ms. Stark.”

“I was going to get you a dancer, not an escort. Unless you wanted an escort. You know, for dinner.” Toni arched an insouciant eyebrow. “Which you’re putting on your expense account, of course. Along with the dancer, if you want one. Or two.”

An offended glare began to form on Pepper’s face, but she started giggling before it was fully established. “Dinner sounds lovely. I’ll invite one of my friends.”

“You have friends?” Ms. Stark inquired, in a voice that suggested this was not so much a surprise as an expected error that needed fixing.

“Patient friends,” Pepper grinned. “Don’t worry, boss, they understand I’m at your beck and call.”

“Oh. Damn. That will make it harder to drive them off by working you harder.” Shaking her head, Toni sighed mournfully. “I might even have to expend brain-cycles figuring it out.”

“I love working here, Ms. Stark, but I’m allowed to have friends.”

Toni studied her for a minute or two, then grinned. “Fine. Friends. I’ll put it in your contract next time we renew it.”

She didn’t, of course, not least because Legal would have had a fit. But there was a different (and inevitably attractive) massage therapist waiting by Pepper’s desk every day for the rest of the month. For Ms. Stark, that was practically an apology.

* * *

**  
Two: Dating**

Wrapped in a fluffy robe, water still beaded on her throat, Pepper stood in front of the big mirror in Toni’s Malibu bathroom. “JARVIS,” she asked while brushing out her fiery hair, “Remind Toni that she needs to get dressed for the show, will you?”

The stuffy British AI replied with his usual, snarky grace. “Of course, Ms. Potts. Would you prefer I employ the fire alarm or the power outage?”

Pepper frowned at her reflection. “She’s that far gone?”

“Ms. Stark is currently attempting to perfect an active camouflage system for the Aegis. It is not going well.”

Pepper sighed.

Two minutes later, she let herself into the garage, wincing at the blaring mullet rock, and went to stand as much in Toni’s line of sight as the workspace would allow. She hoped that her complete lack of anything resembling clothing would help attract her lover’s attention, but she wasn’t counting on it.

“Toni.”

“Um,” Antonia Stark said from inside the guts of one of the smaller, more form-fitting versions of her Aegis powered armor, whose surface was dancing with weird, distorted images of itself and the room around them - including, now, a thoroughly naked Pepper Potts.  For Toni, that was downright responsive.

The redhead crossed her arms. “Toni! We have plans.”

“Um,” again, this time with a little more emphasis. Toni was wearing a clinging, beat-up muscle-T covered in grease stains and oil-spattered cargo pants with a heavy workbelt, which suggested she’d been at this for a while. Possibly as long as twenty hours, which was the last time Pepper had seen her - in bed, upstairs, while she appeared to be perfectly asleep. Something hissed and spat sparks, and Toni jerked out of the body of the suit, cursing like a sailor. The flickering images cut off, leaving a dull gray armored sheen behind. Still swearing, Toni fished in her belt for a new tool. Stopped.

She turned and looked Pepper up and down, very slowly, and seemed to really notice her for the first time. “Is it my birthday?” she asked, possibly entirely seriously.

“No.” Unfolding her arms, Pepper brandished the tickets to the famous improv group that was performing in LA that night, her voice becoming colder and harder with each word. “Us. One year. Tonight. _Plans_.”

Toni’s lips twitched, maybe in the start of a smile, and Pepper could see her trying to make up her mind as she glanced from the half-gutted power armor to her irate girlfriend and back. It took her at least a hundred and seventy seconds - an eternity, by her standards - to make up her mind. “I should shower,” she declared, as though it was her own idea to begin with.

A bit of the tension in Pepper’s lean frame relaxed, but she didn’t take her eyes off the engineer until Toni was heading up the stairs to the house.

“Did I get you something nice?” Toni’s voice drifted out of the bathroom a few seconds after the toolbelt audibly hit the floor of the bedroom.

In the huge walk-in closet, Pepper was dressing in a black skirt-suit. It was a bit out of date now, but for being what she’d been wearing when she first kissed Toni (for real, and not as a media stunt), she could forgive a little obsolescence. She smiled and thumbed the fine wool, then turned to her jewelry collection.

“Very nice,” she called. The necklace she lifted out of the protective cotton was several delicate swirls of platinum ribbons twined around each other, some polished to a mirror shine, some encrusted with diamonds and faceted aquamarines.

Toni liked her throat, didn’t much care how much jewelry cost and bought her a lot of apology presents, which meant she had the most well-adorned collar-bones in the county.  Well, technically it was mostly Pepper who bought them, but Toni approved in principle.

Before Pepper was done applying her makeup, Toni wandered in looking for something to wear. She stopped, glanced at the necklace, then chuckled in that particular way she had that sounded rueful and delighted at the same time. “I have great taste.”

“Mm,” Pepper agreed. “You always have, at least since I started working for you.”

“Clearly I just needed the right inspiration.” Toni ran her fingertips along the racks of her clothes, stopped at a particularly fiercely red dress and smiled. “You have great hair, Pep. How about I match it?”

“Okay.” Pepper’s voice was calm, but she let her eyes wander leisurely over Toni’s naked body. “No rush.”

“If you keep looking at me like that, Miss Potts,” Toni breathed without turning around, “we’re not going to make it to the performance.”

As attractive as that sounded, Pepper averted her eyes and smiled to herself. She had plans along those lines for when they got home, and this was a night she didn’t intend to rush. They did enough of that as it was, between Toni trying to enforce peace with her own two metal-clad hands and Pepper trying to timeshare herself between running the company and not worrying herself sick (which took a lot more time than most people realized). Tonight was going to be different.

That was what she wanted, after all, and when Pepper Potts wanted something, she was very good at getting it.

****

* * *

**Three: New York** ****

After various design, delivery, and timing fiascos, not to mention the never-again-to-be-discussed incident with the flaming penguin that refused to disappear, Stark Industries had established its own in-house print shop. It handled everything from memos to shareholder reports, was run by a manager hand-picked by Pepper herself, and was probably more high-tech than half of NASA.

Looking over the seven leather-bound books on the counter, Pepper smiled. If you wanted something done right, you either did it yourself or delegated to the best person for the job.

Ms. Potts excelled at both.

No two of the volumes were alike; something between scrapbooks and reports, each was tailor-made for its intended recipient. She knew Bruce and Steve would cover their feelings with a grunt of thanks, not-so-secretly treasuring the greeting cards, testimonials and scattering of good press she’d picked out of the media frenzy around the Avengers. It had hurt both of them, if differently, how negative a lot of that reaction had been, and the chance to mend some of that hurt was one she didn’t want to pass up. She had no idea how Natasha and Clint would react, but you didn’t exclude people, especially when those people were world-class assassins. Phil’s copy would have been a problem, but she’d decided to send it to the cellist who - after some grieving - had started taking mysteriously long weekend trips. Pepper could have asked Toni about that, or Nick Fury for that matter, but neither of them would have told her anything useful. Not that she needed to be told.

After all, she knew the smile she’d been wearing around the office after Toni survived Afghanistan. Some things didn’t need explanations.

She was pretty sure Toni already had most of the content downloaded to her personal server. Hopefully the hard copy wouldn’t inflate her ego any more than it already was.

After explaining the delivery of five of the books, she scooped up the last two and headed for the private elevator. It only took a few seconds to get to the top of Avengers (formerly Stark) Tower, so she didn’t actually have time to get her phone all the way out before the empty office space that was usually Toni’s playground told her that her lover had left the building.

She sighed and hit speed-dial. Waited out three buzzes. Got a connection. “Where are you?”

“Out,” Toni provided helpfully, her voice occupying that strange silent background that only expensive noise-canceling equipment could produce. “Why?”

Pepper raised an eyebrow, a delicate motion that was nonetheless fearsome to anyone who knew her. “Because we’re meeting Steve for dinner.” She paused. “Are you in the suit?”

“Um. Maybe. A little. Yes.” Toni cleared her throat, and a hint of an echo leaked into the signal. “What time is it in New York?”

Someday she was going to have Toni install a video connection between her phone and the suit, just so she could properly glare at her girlfriend. “Four thirty. Dinner is at seven-thirty. Steve and I will be going out even if you’re still in another hemisphere.” She stalked into the bedroom, toeing off her pumps. “Our disappointment will be _palpable_ , Toni. You will feel it.”

“Promise?” Toni chuckled a little, then made a little grunt low in her throat. “Okay, I’m pretty sure that wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“Toni,” Pepper said in a deceptively mild voice, “are you in combat while you’re talking to me?”

“We-ell, no. No, not really. No.” Toni made another soft, throaty sound of effort. “I wouldn’t call it combat.”

The pencil skirt hit the floor. A long, hot bath was just what Pepper needed right now. “There will be sex. Sex you will not be allowed to either see or participate in. Or even hear about.”

“Ouch. Maybe we don’t really need Las Vegas after all....”

Pepper sighed softly as she pulled the butterfly clip out of her hair, letting the fiery strands fall around her shoulders. “Seven-thirty. And you’re not allowed to fly the suit to the restaurant.”  

“Why not? After a long, hard day of stopping antiquated Soviet orbital harpoons from leveling major ... well, kinda major ... cities, I really ought to be able to park wherever I want.” Toni’s voice cut off for a few seconds, then came back. “Also? Mirrors in the bathroom were a great choice.”

An angry squawk echoed off the tile. “You’re flying the suit and hacking while you’re talking to me?! Are you _trying_ to get more time sleeping in the extra bedroom?”

“Um.... to be fair, it wasn’t really hacking. I mean, I did design the....”

“Good-bye, Toni.” Pepper enunciated carefully. “I’ll see you tonight or I won’t.”

Her genius-superhero-hacker-egomaniac girlfriend tried to say something else just then, but Pepper jabbed the ‘end call’ button so hard she was glad the touchscreen was made of extra-durable glass. Toni forgetting gifts was one thing. Standing up the most wholesome (and heroically-muscled) man in all of American history was another.

Her phone started in on the Star-Spangled Banner as performed by the organ at Yankee Stadium, and she hit the ‘answer’ button with a smile as she leaned back in the bath. She knew a lot of people, and Captain Rogers was one of her favorites.

“So, about tonight,” Steve started, over a considerable rumble in the background.

Pepper sighed. “Trouble?”

“Clint and Natasha got in a little over their heads, and Fury asked me to bail them out. He said I’d be home in time for dinner, but I’m looking out the window at the South Pacific right now, so....”

A number of uncharitable phrases regarding Fury ran through Pepper’s mind very loudly. Out loud she kept her voice calm. “It’s okay. We can do the world-saving anniversary another time. I’m glad you’re all safe.”

She couldn’t quite hear his sigh of relief over the jet engines, but she knew him well enough to know he was giving it anyway. “Me too. Wait, world-saving? You mean New York? That was today?”

It was a very, very good thing that they’d used the new patented shock-absorption and break-resistant glass on her phone.

* * *

 

**And One: Dating (Again)** ****

“You know,” Toni Stark said from the steps that led down to her ‘garage,’ a grease towel wrapped around her hands and wearing another set of tank top and cargo pants destroyed in a good cause, “I’ve been having this nagging feeling all day like I’ve forgotten something and couldn’t think what it was. Which is mysterious, because I never forget anything.”

Pepper regarded her lover with a raised eyebrow. “You? Never.”

“Nope. Well, nothing really important, anyway.” Toni’s lips curved up in a grin that made it hard to keep her voice deadpan, but somehow she managed it. “But you know, this time, I really do feel like I might have missed something important.”

Taking a sip from her mineral water, Pepper glanced at her laptop’s clock.  Half an hour to midnight. It was still, technically, their anniversary. “Hm,” she mused, letting herself appreciate how good Toni looked in engine grease. “Whatever could it be?”

“Pretty sure it’s something about the date,” Toni murmured, dropping the grease cloth on the clear glass table and walking to the drink cabinet to extract a chilled bottle of champagne and two gold-rimmed glasses. “Possibly annual. But I could be wrong - that has been known to happen. Once or twice, anyway.”

By now Pepper was smiling broadly. “Pretty sure I have documentation of more than that.” With a few taps of her fingers, she ended her programs and then folded the laptop closed.

“Forgeries, clearly.” Toni reached down and unfastened the belt of the cargo pants, dropping them to the wood flooring, then popped the cork on the bottle expertly and poured the two glasses full before depositing them on the table between the laptop and the grease rag and flopping down onto the couch next to Pepper. “Part of your devious plan to take over my company. Doesn’t everyone have one of those?”

Taking her glass in one elegant hand, Pepper leaned in and caressed Toni’s bare thigh with the other. “Please. I have eight.”

“Well, then, I suppose I’m just doomed.” Laughing softly, Toni leaned forward to touch her lips to Pepper’s lightly, then held up her glass in invitation. The Malibu moonlight spilling through the windows caught in the glass, making it shimmer, and the soft glow of the arc reactor peeking over the edge of Toni’s shirt added its own cool shine.

Pepper Potts knew every inch of scar tissue around that reactor by heart, knew the exact position of every sliver of metal still suspended in Toni’s chest. The ‘high-tech band-aid’ had frightened her at first, and sometimes it still did, knowing what it could do. Still, after years of keeping Toni alive - and super-powered - Pepper felt almost affectionate towards it.

If Toni had built her own body, the reactor would be her heart.

Toni caught her looking, reaching up to tap the reactor’s adamant surface lightly with her fingertip, and smiled fondly. “Happy anniversary, Pepper,” the engineer told her softly. “Been quite a ride, hasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” she smiled. Then she leaned in over Toni, fingers gently resting on the reactor, and kissed her. “Happy anniversary, Spark Plug.”

They kissed for a while, fingertips resting together against the warmth of the chained star in Toni’s chest, and then broke for breath and a swallow of champagne each. Pepper smiled softly, reaching for the buttons of her blouse, then raised an eyebrow when Toni stopped her.

“I still have ten, fifteen minutes left in the day, right?” Toni’s eyes twinkled.

“Just about.” The redhead gave her girlfriend an inquisitive look. “My word, Toni, did you get me a present _yourself_?”

“Even better,” Toni assured her as she climbed off the couch, padding toward the stairs barefoot and grinning back over her shoulder. “I made you one myself.”

Still holding the champagne flute, Pepper rose and followed. “I’m simultaneously intrigued and worried about that,” she called ahead.

Toni’s laughter danced back to her up the stairs as JARVIS opened the door to the garage. “What, worried it’s going to blow up?”

“Do you really want me to answer that?” Pepper grinned. She hadn’t been in the garage since Toni had started her latest engineering marathon, but she wasn’t surprised to see parts and tools spread out over every available surface. She had to pick her way carefully through the space, while Toni - even barefoot - seemed to glide through it like a duck in a pond. The engineer sniffed, threw her a look, then smiled impishly and stopped in front of one of the sealed storage containers she used for sensitive projects.

Pepper eyed the container warily. “It’s not another gofer robot, is it?”

“Oh, come on. That was a good idea. It wasn’t my fault that when your intern told it to bring all the water it could, it brought one of the twenty-gallon jugs.” Toni narrowed her eyes and rested a hand against her hip. “Do you want your present or not?

Pepper ducked her head and batted her eyelashes. “Sorry.”

“You should be,” Toni sniffed, but then grinned again. “Now close your eyes.” When it came right down to it, Antonia Stark was just too manic to properly hold a grudge against anyone - much less her girlfriend - for very long.

After setting the champagne safely on a nearby table, Pepper did as she was told, hands folded behind her, lips in a softly amused smile. There was the relatively familiar sound of the container being opened and the small movement of air from Toni’s activities, punctuated by a soft tuneless humming that Toni sometimes indulged in when she was excited. Then Toni glided around her, resting her palms against the curve of Pepper’s hips, and whispered in her ear. “Open your eyes, Pepper Potts.”

Inside the container, gleaming bright crimson, glossy white and polished silver, stood a suit of what on first glance looked like another of Toni’s Aegis armors. Smaller than most of them - more fitted, definitely, and less armored - and there was something different about the shape, too. A feminine touch that was normally aggressively absent in Toni’s warsuits, which usually looked less like a woman in armor and more like an angry robot from the future.

“Oh,” Pepper breathed, mouth open. Her hand floated up to touch a gleaming shoulder plate. “You mean--”  She swallowed, eyes locked on the armor. “It’s my suit?”

“It’s your suit,” Toni affirmed softly. “You thought I didn’t notice you glaring at Rhodey when I modded one of my prototypes for him?”

Staring at the armor, Pepper shook her head. “I-- but--” she tried. Then the mention of the Colonel caught up with her, and she bit her lip. “It’s not full of guns, is it?”

Toni’s smile was slow, but her eyes sparkled. “What would you say if I told you it is absolutely, one hundred percent free of guns, missiles and bombs?”

The engineer caught a face full of red ponytail as Pepper whirled around again, hands on her girlfriend’s shoulders, eyes serious. “You mean it? No weapons?”

“No weapons.” There was a subtle hitch in Toni’s voice, which earned her a harder look, and the engineer heaved a little sigh. “It’s a lot of metal flying through the air driven by and steered with repulsors, Pep. Anything with that amount of power is conceivably a weapon. But I built it without anything designed primarily to function as a weapon, and everything that _is_ on there has a legitimate flight or rescue-scenario related purpose. It is not any more loaded with potential weapons than your average ambulance would be if it flew and was powered by an arc reactor. Fair?”

Nodding mutely, eyes bright with joy, Pepper threw her arms around Toni’s neck. “I-- god-- Toni-- This is more than fair, this is perfect. Thank you.”

“It doesn’t have a name yet, but it does have an on-board copy of JARVIS and the dataspine. Also ninety-six thousand of your favorite songs.” Hugging her tightly, Toni smiled into the hair of the woman who had done more than anything to bring her back from the bright forging hell of Afghanistan. The woman who’d always refused to pick up a gun, much less touch one of the flying weapons of mass destruction Toni had spent the years since their first kiss building. “It’s already imprinted on your retinal pattern, DNA code, voice pattern and vitals.”

Pepper smiled. “So nobody can steal my keys. That’s wonderful.” She released her girlfriend and turned back to the suit, eyes wide like a small child being told she could, in fact, have a pony. “It flies? I get to _fly_?” A tinge of worry coated her exuberance, but then she turned a smirk back to her lover. “I guess if _you_ can avoid crashing into things, I should be able to.”

“JARVIS will take good care of you,” Toni said, a sparkle of retaliatory mischief in her eyes. “I’m sure that he won’t let you hit anything. Too hard. Much.”

Pausing to kiss Toni in lieu of an apology, Pepper continued to examine the gift. “What kind of search and rescue goodies does it have?”

“Laser cutters, diamond-bit drills, fire-retardant foam, defibrillators, breadcrumb dispensers, a first aid chemistry set big enough for a decent-sized disaster site, radio and datalinks to every first response unit in the civilized world, a hybrid repulsor/electromagnet rig that should let you stop a bit over two hundred and twenty six million newtons...”

The redhead’s mouth had opened at ‘breadcrumb dispensers’ to say something snarky, but the sheer number Toni quoted made her gape. “That’s, what, a jetliner? I could catch a _jetliner?_   Holy crap, Toni.”

“Or dead-lift a cruise liner, if necessary. Very, very carefully.” Toni’s eyes were dark and serious, but the edge of her mouth quirked up in a hint of a smile. “About two meters a second, give or take a bit. I was serious about _heavy_ rescue and recovery.”

A short laugh punctuated Pepper’s agreement. “Yeah.” She kissed Toni again. “You realize I won’t be around as much if I’m flying off to natural disasters all the time, right?”

“Just do what I do,” Toni advised her as they drew the kiss out, whispering between brushes of their lips. “Find a pretty, brilliant young thing with the hots for you and stick her with the job.”

“Mm.” Pepper smiled into Toni’s mouth. “I think there’s a flaw in your cunning plan.”

Toni laughed as they finally let the kiss break, her arm still around Pepper’s waist and her eyes dancing with self-aware good humor. “There usually is. While you’re figuring out how to fix it, would you like to take it up?”

The elegant navy pumps that matched Pepper’s pencil skirt hit the floor unceremoniously. “Did you make me a skin suit or do I just go in my skivvies?”

“The locker in the corner of the container has everything you’ll need. Careful with the plumbing connections - if you rush, it’s going to hurt, and I’m going to want to use that equipment later.” The gentle advice came with a lascivious grin.

Pepper made a face. “Ugh. Maybe I should fast first.”

“Doesn’t help. Trust me.”

“Damn.”  

Her skin-suit was the same clingy, sheer black that Toni’s were, and very comfortable except for the necessary tubing and funnels, but getting them hooked up was more  unpleasant than actually wearing them. Sensor-compatible gloves and soft, low-profile running shoes finished the ensemble, and then she was ready.

Toni looked over everything, just to be sure. “Do you want the new optical-sensitive contacts, or just the old-fashioned HUD?”

“HUD. I don’t want to fry a cell tower because I blinked wrong.”

“Luddite.” Toni grinned and kissed her one more time, then stepped back and gave her two thumbs up. “You’re ready to fly, Miss Potts.”

Looking at the gleaming armor that she was about to fly, Pepper bit her lip. “Aren’t you going to suit up, too?”

“Want me to?” Toni’s voice was unusually gentle for her, almost solicitous. “I thought you might want some alone time with it, without me hanging at your six.”

A soft smile answered her. “I will. But I want you to be there to catch my ass if something happens.” They shared another kiss. “Besides, it’s our anniversary.”

“Fair enough. I’ll grab something light. Maybe the new low-observable suit.” Toni’s eyes sparkled with eagerness, and she pushed herself out of Pepper’s arms with gentle firmness that said they were done hugging. “Race you to London, loser buys breakfast.”

Pepper laughed and called to her retreating girlfriend. “Only if I get a head start.”

“I still have to get my skinsuit on!” Toni called back, and then Pepper was alone with the suit that was hers now and hers alone. Four billion dollars of hardware, give or take a bit, designed just for her. As anniversary gifts went, it was a bit extravagant, but Toni _did_ have a lot of making-up to do.

“Ok, JARVIS,” Pepper called to the room. “I’m ready.”

To her delighted surprise, after the suit’s eyes and arc reactor lit up it simply walked out of the crate and unfolded itself like a metallic flower waiting to wrap itself around her. The assembly rig that handled the Aegis wasn’t going to be necessary, after all - her suit had apparently been designed for easy entry and exit, and she was going to have to kiss Toni later for the thoughtfulness of hardware she could not only climb right into, but that would park itself when she was done. JARVIS was giving her an instruction of some kind, but he was going to have to repeat it, because Pepper couldn’t spare even a little attention for anything but her present.

“Hello, girl,” she whispered, as much to herself as the suit. “Let’s see what you can do.”

**Author's Note:**

>  **Dragon sez:** For anyone who's wondering, the 226 million Newton figure is based on the power stunt in _Invincible Iron Man_ during which Pepper Potts, as Rescue, catches a crashing airliner. While a rig that can do that has enough force to do a lot of damage to anything else with major metal structural components, remember that Toni said nothing on Rescue is _designed_ to be a weapon.
> 
> Toni Stark is still, after all, Toni Stark.


End file.
